Category » Transportation Management

As part of the Purchased Transportation track this past March at Evolution 2019, Descartes’ annual global user and partner conference, I moderated an interesting panel discussion comprised of industry experts and practitioners from Nolan Transportation, Echo Global Logistics and Redwood Logistics.

Adrian Gonzalez, industry expert and host of an online video talk show and blog Talking Logistics, connects with Chris Jones, Executive Vice President, Marketing and Services at Descartes for insights from benchmarking studies Descartes conducted about getting the most value from transportation management systems.

Overview: Whether you run a fleet or purchase transportation, the value of transportation management extends well beyond the transportation department. Descartes will cover some of the results of its recent benchmark studies that dive into how top performers do a better job measuring and exploiting transportation management information across the supply chain for superior operational performance and competitive advantage. Specific customer examples will be cited.

Three years ago, we started the Transportation Management Benchmark Survey because we were seeing some companies be incredibly successful in transportation management and positively impact their company’s performance while others just struggled to get value. Now that we have years of data from hundreds of companies, we can better see what macroeconomic and industry trends are shaping transportation strategies and tactics. Most importantly, we can identify how top performers think and act differently from the rest of the pack. Here are some of the key questions addressed in the upcoming web seminar 2019 Transportation Management Strategies of Top Performers on Tuesday, May 7 at 2pm ET.

Descartes Evolution 2019, our annual global user and partner conference, has wrapped up, and it was another year highlighting customer success, insights into the past year’s innovations and upcoming planned roadmaps. There was a record number of attendees and sessions, which was fantastic. With so many speakers, however, I found myself torn as to which sessions to attend while also finding the time to talk to as many customers as possible. I have provided a brief overview of the Purchased Transportation track for those who could not attend, and for the customers who came but could not get to all the sessions they wanted.

For those who couldn’t attend, here are some highlights of Descartes Evolution 2019, focused on the initiatives we have underway and the value they are delivering solutions to customers. If you’re not familiar with Descartes Evolution, it’s our premier event where customers, partners, industry experts, and employees gather to discuss business and technology strategies and tactics that improve supply chain and logistics operations performance and security. Our goal for the event is simple: we want customers to walk away with at least one good idea that they can use to make a difference in their own business.

Given the current capacity crunch, and the huge amounts of investment capital pouring into transportation and logistics technology, there is tremendous discussion on how technology innovation will impact the industry and, more specifically, 3PLs. What will be the impact of digital freight on freight brokers? Will artificial intelligence and machine learning disrupt whole industries? Will technology drive and displace whole categories of jobs?

Back in 2003, when RFID commercialization was accelerating out of MIT, major retailers announced an initiative that required all suppliers to tag pallet deliveries with RFID. The whole supply chain was going to be transformed. Not only would receiving be streamlined, but companies would also have much greater visibility into real-time inventory, and barcodes were going to die. Now, over 15 years later, there are still a lot of barcodes. Point being, what seems like a no-brainer often runs into unforeseen challenges, and how things develop are very hard to predict.

One of the biggest opportunities to dramatically improve supply chain performance occurs when traditional supply chain functions are decomposed and reinvented as integrated business processes. Few supply chain practitioners would dispute that notion. However, when it comes to their technology strategy, too many practitioners end up deploying their transportation management system (TMS) or multiple systems in silos: outbound TL/LTL, parcel, inbound, international, etc. The challenge facing supply chain practitioners who want to achieve breakthrough performance improvement is to understand the value and difference of converging TMS and connecting to their trading partners.

Breaking down the silos is not as simple as integrating the various existing applications. Instead, we are talking about how the business process would be fundamentally different or have completely new capabilities if the technology silos didn’t exist and multiple functions had been designed together in the first place. Part of the problem supply chain practitioners face is stepping out of the business process paradigms that have been dictated by technological limitations of the past. Applications on the same technology stack do not necessarily address the issue. Sometimes it takes new technologies or disruptive business practices to cause us to rethink what we have done in the past. Currently, the market pressures of the Amazon effect, coupled with the capacity crunch are perfect drivers to force this change.

In assessing how to strengthen your carrier relationships, companies can evaluate how business objectives align and how technology can be applied. Collaborating across data scientist teams is also a huge opportunity for shippers and carriers that have invested in analytics.

Despite the increasing availability of same-day and instant delivery, more than 50 percent of consumers choose delivery options based solely on price and 20 percent prefer the cheapest available home delivery option, according to a recent McKinsey study. Consequently, regular parcel delivery (delivered several days after the order) should continue to play a major role in your ecommerce strategy.

With narrowing profit margins, the basic cost-saving tactics for parcel shipping—choosing the smallest and lightest packaging, using USPS First Class Package for everything up to a pound, negotiating rates with carriers, and using an advanced postage system—may fall short. It’s time to get creative with automation strategies and delivery options with world-class parcel shipping software.

As logistics service providers (LSPs) and shippers embrace real-time freight visibility to drive more agility in their supply chains, I often get asked the question How many carriers are in your network? Alternatively, the question might be Which of our carriers are in your network?